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Dear Sir
I send a lot of old pamphlets relating to education in Wisconsin, among them one about the Nashotah [Twin Lake] Theol. Seminary, which is the institution referred to in your letter of the 20th. I well remember the time in 1838 when three earnest & enthusiastic young men appeared in my office of "Register of Claims" to secure the title i. e. the right to purchase at the government land sale, to certain lands on those beautiful little lakes, for the purpose of founding thereon an institution for the promotion of learning and the Christian religion. The pamphlet gives but a brief history and no adequate idea of the good accomplished; Racine College, is only one of the off-shoots, so to speak of this enterprise.
Among the first things thought of in Milwaukee in 1836 was the establishment of schools--Elbert Herring Smith, afterwards famous as the author of a poetical (?) life of Black Hawk --and R. N. Messenger, I remember as among the first teachers in this then embrio city.